


Even If the Sun Doesn't Shine

by deliciousshame



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Space, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-17 12:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousshame/pseuds/deliciousshame
Summary: A teleporter goes on a job and meets a soulless man.The longer, remixed version ofthis.





	

“Dai-chan, you’ve got a new job.”

Daiki does not enjoy waking up to the sound of Satsuki’s shrill voice. “Shut up. Whatever it is, it’s gonna take five minutes, who cares if I don’t get to it right now.”

Satsuki sighs. “You’re just going to let it wait until the client calls me crying you don’t take your calls and the recipient is waiting.”

Heh. That’s true. “They’re still gonna pay me.”

Daiki can tell Satsuki is getting frustrated just from the way her face tenses. “You get a power that lets you coast through life in ease and luxury. I, on the other hand, got stuck with a real job and you, so the least you could do is not make me manage your stuff on top of it.”

“You get a 30% commission for “managing my stuff”, I’m not exactly torturing you.” And considering how much ~~she told him to charge~~ Daiki charges for his services, that’s a looooot of money.

She blushes and pushes the designer handbag she came in with slightly behind her, like Daiki couldn’t see it.

“Whatever, I’m awake now. What’s the job?”

Satsuki brandishes her tablet. “You’ve got a job from the Akashi Conglomerate! Imagine all the business they could send our way if they wanted to! It’s an easy job too: ration delivery. All you have to do is show up at their Ernmas facility, pick up the items from someone called Murasakibara and teleport on their space station for delivery. Here, the coordinates.”

Daiki picks up the tablet. “Do you have pictures?” 

“Next page.” _Who do you think I am?_ is heavily implied. 

He can teleport pretty close to where he wants to go with just the coordinates, but having a clear mental image really helps. Not that he knows why photos of a small space station lost in outer space help. It’s not like it tells him anything about where it is exactly, but magic makes no sense. That’s the one constant of the universe. He looks at the pictures and studies the coordinates until it feels _right_ , until it’s all merging inside him to create a point he can access anytime he wants. Now, all he has to do is think about it and he can get there in a second. “Okay, I’m set.”

Satsuki nods, satisfied. “Good. Get going now. Bye! Don’t be yourself!”

“Asshole. At least let me get dressed.” Daiki doesn’t have very high standards, but he supports not showing up on another planet in boxers.

She throws him one of his own pillows in revenge. Daiki dodges, obviously. 

She leaves. Daiki puts on clothes and leaves himself. 

_________________

Hopefully whoever he’s going to meet on the space station won’t be as much of a pain as the Murasakibara guy who wouldn’t give him the rations. How can someone be in charge of rationing and not want to hand over food? Does he want their deep space employee to starve? Daiki shudders. Starving alone in a space station. That must suck. 

Well, he’s like one of three people with the known power of teleporting over distances calculated in light-years, so that would never happen to him. He would love it if he could also teleport over distances calculated in, say, kilometers, but nooo, it has to at least be on another planet or no dice. 

At least he’ll never want for money. The fastest spaceship could never equal his speed. That makes what he offers priceless. 

Anyway. He arrives into the space station, cargo in tow, and starts looking for the occupant, one Kuroko Tetsuya, to sign the receipt and confirm the delivery.

Except he can’t find him. In a tiny space station. It should be impossible to hide in it, and yet. 

Daiki is about to give up and get Satsuki to take care of the fallout, until “Are you the delivery man?”

The voice comes from a small, pale man that somehow managed to get behind Daiki without him even noticing his presence. “Yeah, but instead of bringing you delicious pizza, I bring you rations.”

The man doesn’t twitch as he signs. “I do not think my employer would pay for pizza to be delivered to me.”

Ooookay. Daiki guesses a guy that spends all his time researching alone in space must be a strange one. “Probably not, but a guy could hope?”

The guy frowns. “Why hope for pizza?”

Daiki is getting confused. “Because it tastes great?”

The man nods, his face impassive. “You’re right. It does.”

How did he end up having a completely serious conversation about pizza delivery with that stranger? Better get out of there. Still. There’s something weird about the way the man stands completely straight, not a muscle moving. “Look, are you okay? No offense, but you’re a bit… strange.”

“Murasakibara-kun did not warn you.”

“Sorry, but I think that guy can barely handle his job. Expecting him to be mindful might be too much to ask. What should he have warned me about?”

“I am soulless.”

Oh.

Well, this explains that.

_________________

A long, long time ago, there was a boy. 

The boy had a dog that would always escape the boy’s yard. The neighbors grew used to seeing the boy show up in their gardens, looking for his dog. They never minded. 

So when the boy couldn’t find the dog at the house next door, nor the one after or the one after that one, he kept looking. He went down the streets until he went through all the houses, and then at the park, and then into the wood until he stumbled upon a small, dark house surrounded with twisted weeds and dark bushes. The boy was frightened, but he still entered the house to go look for his dog. 

He looked into the living room, but it wasn’t there. 

He looked into the kitchen, but it wasn’t there.

He looked into the bedroom, but it wasn’t there. 

He looked into the basement, and there the dog was, broken glass, shreds of plants and roots and old parchment papers everywhere. 

The boy was displeased, because the dog was obviously the source of the trouble. The boy was a polite boy, so he waited for the owner of the house to come back to apologise for his dog’s wrongdoings. 

But the boy did not know that the owner of the house was a witch. When she arrived and saw what happened to her house, she was so enraged that she screamed at the boy until he left the house running, tears running down his face, the apology still stuck in his throat. 

He knew he had done a bad thing, so the boy told his parents what happened. Scared, they ran down the streets and through the park and into the forest, but the place where the house used to be was bare. 

Nothing happened to the boy the next day, nor the one after and not the one after that one. But about a month later, the boy woke up, looked at his dog and wondered why he kept wasting his time looking after the dog.

So he asked his parents to give the dog away. The parents first thought something had happened with the dog and tried to reason with him, but as they talked they could tell the boy did not care about the dog anymore.

The boy did not care about anything anymore, so he looked at his parents crying and said nothing. 

_________________

He gets another job to feed the man. He can already tell this will become a routine. People that can afford him often start wondering why they should bother with arranging interstellar travel when they can just call a guy and have it done in a few minutes. 

The thing is, he thinks he might have been a bit of a jerk to Space Station Guy the other day. It’s not his fault he’s soulless. Well, it probably is, but Daiki is of the mind that no one deserves to lose _their fucking soul_ just because they pissed off a witch. Witches get pissed off at the slightest provocation. Bump into a witch? Soulless. Step on their cat’s tail? Soulless. Murder their son? Soulless. All those things he listed? Documented cases. They don’t understand scale. 

Witches are weird. 

Witches are also super rare, which is a blessing. The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of soulless people walking around being emotional robots. 

The point is, people tend to be wary of soulless people because they think they must have been bad people to deserve it, or disgusted because they’re not quite fully human. They don’t have souls, and the only way you can tell is by their lack of presence and the way they’re almost always apathetic. 

Random guy doesn’t deserve to be treated like shit because of something Daiki doesn’t even know about. Plus, Daiki is probably the only person he sees in… ever, really. How depressing would it be for someone if the only person they ever saw was an asshole? (It wouldn’t be, because he doesn’t have a soul and so doesn’t care, but you get the idea.) Anyway, Daiki isn’t going to be that asshole. In fact, Daiki is going to become that guy’s friend. Even soulless people need friends. They just don’t know it. 

What was that guy’s name anyway? He can at least look before getting there. 

He looks at his receipt. Kuroko Tetsuya.

So, he might not have a soul, but if he remembers correctly, Kuroko Tetsuya still has taste buds. 

Daiki shows up with a pizza. 

_________________

Daiki was right. The Akashi Conglomerate can obviously afford his services and finds them valuable. Or whatever Tetsu works on is just that profitable. He finds himself teleporting to Tetsu’s space station at least once a month, most of the time for food delivery, but sometimes with some important documents or to pick up the results of Tetsu’s research. 

He also makes a habit of bringing something fresh and delicious each time, because soulless people still have all their senses. They still can appreciate good food. 

(Sometimes, Daiki wonders if Tetsu would accept his advances if he promised to keep it uncomplicated. He could still appreciate sex. Then he realises how terrible an idea this would be, and tries to shake it out of his mind.) 

Daiki makes sure to chat with Tetsu a little each time. He tries to keep him updated on major events from the various colonies. He tells him about what he’s done lately. He asks Tetsu what he’s been working on. Tetsu always answers politely.

He knows Tetsu is just humoring him. He’s not interested in Daiki’s life at all, doesn’t see the point of social interactions. They’re not developing a friendship. Daiki’s just this dumb guy getting attached to this person that can’t care about him. 

Except one day, Daiki tells Tetsu about his love for basketball. He’s talking about how he used to be pretty serious about it. He tells him about the friends he made playing it. He jokingly tells Tetsu they should play when he’s done with his job, and Tetsu tells him he too used to play before he lost his soul. He says it like he says everything else, with a monotone voice, but it strikes Daiki deep inside. He can see it, them playing together, Tetsu _smiling_ for once in his life, and he _wants that so bad_. There must be something he can do.

…

Removing a soul from a person’s body is a major spell, but it’s only that, just another spell. It can be lifted by anyone with the power to do so. 

If Daiki wants to see Tetsu smile, all he has to do is get a witch to get his soul back into his body. It won’t be easy, but Daiki has money, the power to teleport over huge distances and Satsuki on his side. He can totally do that. 

Daiki, completely distracted, absentmindedly says goodbye to Tetsu and gets back home. He needs to talk to Satsuki. 

_________________

“You want me to look for a witch.”

“Yeah.”

“What do you even need a witch for?” 

Look, he gets that Satsuki is worried. It’s practically in her job description to worry about him doing stupid shit. But this isn’t stupid shit. “I need her to give someone their soul back.”

“…What?”

“It’s for Tetsu! He’s the guy from the space station! He doesn’t have a soul and he’s always alone and he used to like basketball and his dog and his family but now he doesn’t even know we’re friends!”

“Dai-chan, Kuroko-san’s employer might not be pleased if you give him his soul back. Won’t his job be harder if he feels the isolation?”

“Seriously!? Who the fuck cares! Tetsu can get another job, he must be brilliant to work that one! The damned conglomerate can hire another scientist.”

“What about your job? This won’t look good.”

Daiki knows this conversation wouldn’t go that way if Satsuki was in front of him instead of over the phone. She’s a very caring person. She could not stop herself from considering poor, cold Tetsu alone in space, forever. “I have enough money to retire right now and live six lifetimes in luxury. I don’t care if I lose a few jobs.” 

“…Even if he gets his soul back, he might not like you. Maybe you won’t like the person he really is.”

Daiki knows that, but he doesn’t believe it. He just feels like there’s _something_ alive between them, something that would flourish if given half a chance. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

“You’re serious about this.”

Duh. He wouldn’t have called her if he wasn’t. “Yeah.”

“…I’m going to start looking. I’ll call you when I find something.”

_________________

The witch is called Midorima. She apparently lives on Balor, which is a shitty planet ages away. Its main continent is mostly covered by swamps, so of course a witch saw that and said “Yup, this is where I want to spend the rest of my life.” Fucking witches. 

Also, there are no pictures of the witch’s house, just an approximative address, which means Daiki will probably end up teleporting right into said swamp and piss off the witch by dragging mud all over her witch house. If he manages to find it.

Daiki goes anyway because it will be worth it. He’s sure of it.

_________________

He does end up in a swamp. Walking around soaked in mud is not fun. Daiki will have to go see his doctor to make sure he didn’t get a rare Balor sickness or some other shit.

Then he has to go around like an idiot until he finds the house, which takes, what, about three hours, maybe four?

Fuck his life. 

Anyway, he stares at the house until he knows he can get back, and teleports back to his house for a shower and a change of clothes. Not pissing off the witch by dragging mud inside and getting his soul banished too. That wouldn’t be helpful. 

So he gets back, and he knocks. And waits. And waits.

Damn it, the witch isn’t home. Of course she isn’t. 

Just to make sure. “Just so you know, I can teleport, and I’ll come back until someone opens that door.”

Sure enough, he can hear steps coming his way.

Please let him not have pissed off the witch too bad.

The door opens violently, revealing a tall, green-haired man with spectacles. “What?”

“Hello. I wanna talk to the witch, Midorima?”

The man stares at him. “Yes?”

Is he dumb? “Is she there?”

The guy snorts in annoyance. “I’m right here.”

…Witches can be guys? Seriously? 

Damn it, Satsuki, you could have said. “Sorry about that, I was misinformed. I need someone to get back my friend’s soul? Please help me?”

Midorima closes the door in his face.

Yeah, no. Daiki starts knocking constantly, getting louder as it goes on. “Come on, please help me out! The poor guy doesn’t deserve what happened to him (probably)! He’s miserable (He would be if he understood)! I’m rich as fuck, I can pay you pretty much anything!”

At that, the door opens. Ha! Even witches need cash.

Midorima is still sulky, but he opens the door and gestures for him to enter. 

“Oh, Shin-chan, we have a guest?”

“Takao, shut up for a second.”

Takao mimes zipping his lips shut, but his eyes are still twinkling as he stares at them. 

Daiki sits at the table. Midorima hands him a cup of tea and leaves the room, taking the guy called Takao with him.

Should he drink the tea? Maybe he should just dump it in the sink just to be safe?

Probably not. The witch would find out, and not offending the witch is the day’s motto. 

He drinks the tea. It’s some sort of herbal. Daiki doesn’t know enough about tea to tell. 

Tetsu probably could. He loves tea as much as a soulless person can love something.

Midorima comes back with an old book. He lets it fall on the table with a thud, find the right page and turns it toward him. “I need every ingredient written on this page. If you can get it all for me, I’ll do it.” He pushes a small scrap of paper toward him. There’s quite a decent amount written on it, but nothing he can’t afford. “I’ll also take this.”

This is a pretty eclectic list. It’s gonna take a while and a lot of resources, but he has all that. “Should be no problem. Can I take a picture of it?” 

Midorima nods. “Go ahead. Come back when you’re done.”

Daiki leaves.

_________________

When Daiki finally teleports back to Balor, he’s ready to murder someone. He travelled all over the galaxies to get all those fucking ingredients. It took forever and then some. To add insult to injury, he knows he said the contrary to Satsuki, but he hopes he’ll still get jobs after this because his funds are considerably depleted. 

Still, it will definitively be worth it if Midorima succeeds, which he better do. It’s all he can think about as he knocks. “It’s me, I have everything, so you better open this door or you’ll regret it.”

Midorima still looks surly when he opens the door, but he lets him in without a word. Daiki drops all the shit he got over the kitchen table, under Midorima’s grim gaze and Takao’s amused eyes. Midorima nods. “That is everything. Come back in a month.”

“What!”

Midorima glares. “This is a complicated spell. It takes time. Leave me to work or leave and never come back.”

Daiki glares back. “Fine.” He’s not happy about it, but what can he do? 

“Don’t worry, Shin-chan’s a softy. He’ll definitively help out your sweetheart.”

“He’s not my sweetheart!/Takao, shup up!” 

Takao just starts laughing.

Fuck witches. 

_________________

“This is your potion. Make him drink it. But pay me first.”

…Daiki did not even have to knock. Seems like he was expected. “Okay. Thanks, I guess.”

“…Good luck. Not that you need it. I did everything right, and so I never fail.”

“…Sure. Bye.”

That’s how he ends up showing uninvited on Tetsu’s space station, with a strange witch vial that he has to convince Tetsu to drink. 

“Aomine-kun? Are you here to deliver more food? ”

“Sorry, but no. I do have this though. I really think you should try it.”

“Okay.” Tetsu reaches for the vial. 

Daiki almost lets him take it. Almost. “Tetsu, before you drink this, you have to know what it is.” Tetsu stills and wait for him to continue. “I got this from a witch. It should get you your soul back.” If you wanted to go into details, this potion will remove the shield that’s been keeping Tetsu’s soul from his body, allowing it to get back to where it belongs.

Tetsu takes the vial without hesitation. Huh. Daiki didn’t expect that. 

He drinks it all in a few seconds.

Time passes. Tetsu doesn’t say a thing. Daiki is going to kill Midorima.

Then Daiki notices that Tetsu is crying silently. 

Oh. It worked.

Daiki takes Tetsu into his arms, patting his back gently. “Welcome back. Maybe I should introduce myself? My name’s Aomine Daiki. I’m your friend.”

Tetsu looks up from Daiki’s chest and smiles at him through the tears. “My name is Kuroko Tetsuya. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

_________________

As previously mentioned, Daiki gives no fuck about the Akashi Conglomerate. Akashi Seijuurou himself can show up to complain and Daiki will still give no fuck. Once Tetsu was done crying, once of the first thing he said was that he wanted out of the space station, _now_ , so Daiki teleported them both out of there to Daiki’s pretty cool house on a pretty trendy planet.

Tetsu starts crying again when he sees the sun. Daiki gets it, but he’s going to start crying too if he starts thinking about how much Tetsu must have missed. 

Daiki takes him inside. He made it clear that everything that was his was Tetsu’s, so he shows him the rooms and tells him to pick whichever he wants for now. Tetsu settles on a green room on the south side. The window lets in a lot of sunshine and there’s a huge chair where one could easily settle with a good book. 

Daiki leaves him there and brings him a cup of tea he did not just buy because he thought Tetsu might like it. But when he arrives, Tetsu’s already sleeping in that chair. Daiki sets the cup on the tea table and tries to deal with the fact that Tetsu could make him do anything if he only asked. He’s starting to be at peace with the fact that Tetsu stole his heart from the moment he smiled through his tears and all Daiki wanted to wipe those tears away and kiss him until it stopped hurting. It’s just that Tetsu is too vulnerable for him to make a move. He needs to get used to life with normal emotions again. Maybe he’ll want to get back to his family. Maybe he’ll want to get back to his job. Maybe he won’t be able to stand Daiki. 

Enough of that. Let him sleep in peace.

_________________

Tetsu ends up staying in his home. He didn’t have a place of his own, having worked for so long in space. 

He turns out to be naturally polite, and so seems to feel incredibly indebted to Daiki for not only giving him back his soul, but also hosting him. He says he has all that pay he never really used and he can pay rent, but Daiki wants to hear nothing of it. He also has all the money he needs. 

Daiki still finds him doing chores around the house, like the maid doesn’t come by each week to keep the place clean. 

Tetsu talks to his parents. Daiki doesn’t listen in, but Tetsu comes back with red eyes. He offers to bring him to them if he wants to, but Tetsu refuses. Daiki would insist if he thought that was out of politeness, but the way Tetsu shakes a little seems to reveal he’s just not ready yet, so he lets it go. 

They do play basket together. Tetsu is _terrible_. Neither of them minds. Tetsu does smile like Daiki imagined he would, and that’s all he could ask for. 

The first time he has to leave for a job, Daiki has to restrain himself from calling Satsuki to babysit Tetsu. He knows he’s being ridiculous, considering he can teleport and so it will take ten minutes max. 

Everything turns out fine. Daiki calms down and buys him another book to fill his ever-growing collection. He can’t imagine how beginning to love everything again must feel. 

Daiki accepts more jobs. Tetsu slowly settles back into normalcy, aided by a psychologist trained to deal with exactly his situation. When the whole world is your customer base, you can afford to be very specialized. 

Everything goes so well that Daiki starts thinking that maybe Tetsu should move on with his life, by which he means maybe Daiki should let him go. Let’s be clear, he doesn’t want Tetsu to go away, but he feels his hand over everything Tetsu currently has and it makes him uneasy. He’s afraid that Tetsu might feel obligated. Daiki never wants him to feel obligated to do anything. 

He just has no idea how to breach the subject. Just as much as he fears pressuring him, he doesn’t want him to feel like he’s unwanted. Nothing could be farther from the truth. 

It’s just that, somehow, despite both of them being as different as two people can be, Tetsu fits perfectly in his life. He’s very fond of the person he turned out to be, and he believes Tetsu likes him too. They didn’t end up unsuitable the way he feared. Quite the opposite. 

But no matter how much he tries, he can’t make any sense of all his conflicting feelings, so he puts it all aside and waits for Tetsu to bring it up. 

When it finally happens, Daiki isn’t expecting it at all. Of course he isn’t. He’s just relaxing in his living room, playing with his phone. Tetsu comes to sit beside him and Daiki absentmindedly slides a little bit closer to the armrest to give him more room.

Tetsu grabs his arm to keep him right where he is. That’s unusual. Even after, Tetsu never became very prone to touching. Daiki stops moving and turns toward him. “What is it?”

“I’ve been talking to my psychologist” Daiki hopes he’s been talking to him. What’s the point if he isn’t? “and I think we need to talk.”

Oh. That doesn’t sound good. “Sure. About what?”

“I got a job.”

Oh, okay. “Great!” He’s honest about it too. Of course he would love to have Tetsu around all the time, but he doesn’t think Tetsu himself would enjoy it. “Where?” 

A man must have his priorities in the right place. 

Tetsu looks like he’s steeling himself. “Do you want me to move out? I could. My psychologist thinks I should.”

“No! Well, you can if you want to, but you only should if you want to. Not because you feel like you have to.” Oh god, he’s babbling. Breathe, Daiki, breathe. Don’t panic. 

Tetsu looks like he finds it funny, so at least there’s that. “That’s what I told him you would say. It’s not like I don’t understand where he comes from. I’m being too dependent.”

“I’m pretty sure he’s more worried about me holding too much power over you.”

“And that is why I don’t mind staying. I tried to explain, but he was understandably doubtful. In the end, it doesn’t matter. It’s my choice to make, not his.” A few moments of silence. “My former employer values my work. They are willing to rent a lab nearby for me to continue researching. Of course, the subject will change since it would be ridiculous to try to recreate my original work conditions on the surface, but I don’t mind. Really, the main difference would be I would go back home each night.” His hand slides down Daiki’s arm to entwine with his. “Would you wait for me?”

Daiki has been waiting for Tetsu pretty much since they first met. “What do you think?”

Tetsu smiles. It’s not as blinding as that first smile was, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s still beautiful.


End file.
